Eliza Benites-Gambirazio

About Eliza Benites-Gambirazio

Eliza is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Arizona.

Her current work focuses on real estate and residential dynamics in the Tucson metropolitan area in Arizona, and more specifically on the practices of market intermediaries (developers and realtors) in structuring housing demand. Her research lies at the intersection between urban sociology, economics and the environment.

While at the Universidad de Chile, she conducted research on Transantiago, the new public transportation system in Santiago de Chile. Her research sought to understand the process of modernization through interviews with policy makers, elected officials and public employees. Through participant observation in buses and informal interviews with bus users, the research also analyzed the reception of the new transportation system by its inhabitants, raising issues of social change and cultural adaptation provoked by a new mode of urban mobility as well as the memories created around the old system of transportation.

Eliza carried out a quantitative research on the residents of gated communities in the United States, their socio-economic and ethnic demographics and their concerns around security and housing conditions.

She is an active member of the Research Unit iGlobes created in 2008 by the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Arizona.